Views and analysis of Chinese politics and policy from inside China, outside the Beijing and Shanghai beltways

Thursday, 5 May 2016

A Fire That Never Really Got Lit

A follow-up to the previous post: Renmin
Ribao today reported on the
success of the campaign against “flies” in Guangxi, claiming that “as of March
of this year, Guangxi has dealt with the problem of corruption and malpractices
against the interests of the masses.”

According
to the report, 6832 officials were investigated for having ‘unhealthy
tendencies:3039 people received
punishment; 1518 received verbal warnings; 486 people had their cases referred
to judicial organs.”

Some of those investigated were also compelled to reimburse
the locality in which their malfeasance occurred.

The report noted that the investigations began last
year—specifically, in September 2015—and therefore precedes the airing of the
program that’s discussed in the previous post.

In other words, the implicit claim was that the province (or
even Beijing, through the Central Discipline and Inspection Commission, or CCDI)
was looking to the allegations about graft in Nanning before the television event in question.

It’s not entirely clear what the purpose of this
announcement is, and it could simply be a one-off attempt to address a particularly
pernicious sort of local corruption in a single place.At the same time, the report is a
sharp signal to officials (and any unconvinced activists) that it's the CCDI that will
attend to these challenges; that there’s no need for local programs
exposing corruption to act unilaterally. In other words, Xi’s anticorruption crusade still wants to manage matters from above,
and Beijing doesn't like seeing local governments or agents acting on their
behalf trying to take the lead from below.

So, if there was an experiment by some to get back to using television programming to expose graft and cadres behaving badly, that’s now over.